Royal Dutch Shell PLC
Location: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands Founders: Marcus Samuel and Samuel Samuel Founded: April 1907 Key People: Charles O. Holliday (Chairperson) Ben van Beurden (CEO) Employees: 82,000 More About The Manufacturer: The Royal Dutch Shell Group was created in April 1907 through the amalgamation of two rival companies: the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (Dutch: Koninklijke Nederlandse Petroleum Maatschappij) of the Netherlands and the Shell Transport and Trading Company Limited of the United Kingdom. It was a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with Standard Oil. The Royal Dutch Petroleum Company was a Dutch company founded in 1890 to develop an oilfield in Pangkalan Brandan, North Sumatra, and initially led by August Kessler, Hugo Loudon, and Henri Deterding. The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks were part of the legal name) was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and his brother Samuel Samuel. Their father had owned an antique company in Houndsditch, London, which expanded in 1833 to import and sell seashells, after which the company "Shell" took its name. During the First World War, Shell was the main supplier of fuel to the British Expeditionary Force. It was also the sole supplier of aviation fuel and supplied 80 percent of the British Army's TNT. It also volunteered all of its shipping to the British Admiralty. In 1919, Shell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed Shell-Mex Limited which marketed products under the "Shell" and "Eagle" brands in the United Kingdom. In 1929, Shell Chemicals was founded. By the end of the 1920s, Shell was the world's leading oil company, producing 11 percent of the world's crude oil supply and owning 10 percent of its tanker tonnage. The 1930s saw Shell's Mexican assets seized by the local government. After the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940, the head office of the Dutch companies was moved to Curacao. In 1945 Shell's Danish headquarters in Copenhagen was bombed by Royal Air Force Mosquitoes in Operation Carthage. Around 1952, Shell was the first company to purchase and use a computer in the Netherlands. The computer, a Ferranti Mark 1*, was assembled and used at the Shell laboratory in Amsterdam. In 1970 Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it subsequently sold in 1994 and now forms part of BHP Billiton. In November 2004, following a period of turmoil caused by the revelation that Shell had been overstating its oil reserves, it was announced that the Shell Group would move to a single capital structure, creating a new parent company to be named Royal Dutch Shell plc, with its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, a secondary listing on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, its headquarters and tax residency in The Hague, Netherlands and its registered office in London. The unification was completed on July 20th, 2005 and the original owners delisted their companies from the respective exchanges. On July 20th, 2005, the Shell Transport & Trading Company plc was delisted from the LSE, whereas, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company from NYSE on November 18th, 2005. The shares of the company were issued at a 60/40 advantage for the shareholders of Royal Dutch in line with the original ownership of the Shell Group. In February 2010 Shell and Cosan formed a 50:50 joint-venture, Raízen, comprising all of Cosan's Brazilian ethanol, energy generation, fuel distribution and sugar activities, and all of Shell's Brazilian retail fuel and aviation distribution businesses. In March 2010, Shell announced the sale of some of its assets, including its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) business, to meet the cost of a planned $28bn capital spending program. Shell invited buyers to submit indicative bids, due by 22 March, with a plan to raise $2–3bn from the sale. In June 2010, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to acquire all the business of East Resources for a cash consideration of $4.7 billion. The transaction included East Resources' tight gas fields. Over the course of 2013, the corporation began the sale of its US shale gas assets and cancelled a US$20 billion gas project that was to be constructed in the US state of Louisiana. A new CEO Ben van Beurden was appointed in January 2014, prior to the announcement that the corporation's overall performance in 2013 was 38 percent lower than 2012—the value of Shell's shares fell by 3 percent as a result. Following the sale of the majority of its Australian assets in February 2014, the corporation plans to sell a further US$15 billion worth of assets in the period leading up to 2015, with deals announced in Australia, Brazil, and Italy. Royal Dutch Shell announced on 8 April 2015 it had agreed to buy BG Group for £47 billion (US$70 billion), subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. The acquisition was completed in February 2016, resulting in Shell surpassing Chevron Corporation and becoming the world's second-largest non-state oil company. On 7 June 2016, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it would build an ethane cracker plant near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after spending several years doing an environmental cleanup of the proposed plant's site. In January 2017, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to sell £2.46bn worth of North Sea assets to oil exploration firm Chrysaor. In 2017, Shell sold its oil sands assets to Canadian Natural Resources in exchange for an approximately 8.8% stake in that company. In May 2017, it was reported that Shell plans to sell its shares in Canadian Natural Resources fully exiting the oil sands business. Royal Dutch Shell is still a vital part of iRacing Fuel Suppliers for many of its racecars even the F1 cars and many more cars that uses it. Category:European Fuel Suppliers Category:Dutch Fuel Suppliers Category:Fuel Suppliers